This study is part of a more extensive project aimed to investigate the effectiveness of self-help group participation in improving quality of life in mental disease. The study is taking place in the Tuscany Region, in Italy. In the first qualitative step of analysis researchers are interested in describing the specific features of the psychiatric self-help movement in Tuscany, comparing different realities, networks, kind of groups. Therefore, our aim is to collect exhaustive information to describe how self-help system work in different provinces at the present moment. The implementation of groups for psychiatric problems is quite young in Italy. Because of a lack of specific regulation in the directives of the Italian health care system, every local service has implemented groups differently, sometimes enhancing, sometimes dismissing them. Prato, near Florence, is one of the more interesting context for the birth of psychiatric self-help movement in the region: public health services improved groups since early 90’s, it was one of the first self-help reality linked to services in the entire region. Now we are in a “second generation” of professionals, and the original meaning of groups seems to be transformed, sometimes misunderstood. Our objectives of study head us toward an in depth analysis of self-help phenomenon in Prato
